Based on the median heating distribution of the 29 models we find the following: (1) The model consensus of near equatorial heating is greater in magnitude and lower (~500 mb) than that computed from the ECMWF analysis by Hoskins et al. (1989). (2) The subtropical cooling tends to be greater in magnitude and highter than the Hoskins et al. computation, although this will be affected by the terms neglected in the budget computation. Consideration of the individual model fields show that (3) there is a large variation in the magnitude and distribution of the tropical diabatic heating amongst the models. The magnitudes in the northern summer vary by more than a factor of two. (4) the amount of seasonal asymmetry about the equator varies widely among the models. For some models the heating maximum remains on the northern side of the equator for both seasons. (5) It is evident that the interactions among the many parameterizations and model formulations obscure any systematic signature of a particular penetrative convective scheme. Finally, given the differences in the heating distributions among the models for this zonally-averaged, seasonally-averaged ten-year data set, it is clear that there is not yet a consensus on the proper parameterization suite to simulate this essential field. (pdf file)
UCRL-MI-123395